Must-See TV
Army Of Darkness
ElRey
5 p.m.
A discount-store employee is time-warped to a medieval castle, where he is the foretold savior who can dispel the evil there. Unfortunately, he screws up and releases an army of skeletons. (tvguide.com)

The [Tuesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

"After a four-year court battle, a Chicago food truck owner on Monday failed in her effort to overturn what she calls 'burdensome' and 'damaging' rules governing mobile vendors in the city. The judgment likely will have a significant and lasting impact on Chicago's food truck industry, which has struggled to grow, in contrast to other U.S. cities," the Tribunereports.

"Food truck owners say the regulations, first passed in 2012, have hurt sales and caused many trucks to go out of business altogether. Those who remain say they're locked in hypercompetitive fights for parking at the most popular serving locations in the Loop, and are forced to adopt extreme strategies, like sending out cars to hold lunch spots in the early morning hours, or opting to serve in more food truck-friendly areas outside downtown."

I'm with the food truck owners on this one. I sense everyone but City Hall and the brick-and-mortar restaurants the city is protecting from competition are too. But alas:

"Cook County Circuit Judge Anna Helen Demacopoulos on Monday upheld two key components of the city's food truck ordinance: a rule that the trucks stay 200 feet away from restaurants or other businesses that serve food, like Walgreens, and a requirement that mobile vendors use a city-monitored GPS device. A lawsuit by [Laura] Pekarik, owner of the Cupcakes for Courage food truck, had argued that these rules were unconstitutional and damaged her business.

"The third main mandate of the ordinance, the requirement that food trucks may not park in any space for more than two hours, was not challenged in the lawsuit."

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I haven't researched the constitutional issues at play, but it's clear the regulations are overburdensome by design, hardly driven by safety and street congestion issues. To wit:

"City spokesman Bill McCaffrey said it is 'pleased with the ruling, which reaffirms that the ordinance strikes the right balance between the interests of food trucks and those of restaurants.'"

The only interest of restaurants is to keep competition away. By this logic, though, you may as well require one restaurant to stay 200 feet away from another restaurant - and only stay open two hours a day. I find it hard to see how a judge ought to be balancing the interests of food trucks against anything other than the public interest.

"Demacopoulos said in her ruling that the case pitted 'restaurants against the young pop star - the food truck,' but found that the law allows the city to 'balance' competition within its borders."

Really? It doesn't seem to me that the city's job is to balance competition within an industry. Encourage it, yes. Discourage it, no. Which is what these rules are really meant to do.

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According to Pekarik's lawyer, "Chicago is the only city of the top 10 metropolitan cities in the country to have these types of rules."

"Nearly four years after Chicago aldermen crafted a new law regulating food trucks, an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago's I-Team has found the rules are frequently broken with violators seldom facing any consequences because enforcement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration is so lax."

Next: Our joint investigation into people littering the city with newspapers.

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My guess is the administration was lax to enforce the rules because A) it had better things to do, and B) the rules exist for the discretion of the city to bring the hammer down at its convenience on behalf of a friend or to punish a foe.

"For instance, in the 100 block of South Clark Street, a short walk from City Hall, reporters found the law is ignored virtually every weekday, with as many as a 13 food trucks lined up between Adams Street and Monroe Street."